no, then market forces will take over … that race to the bottom is already happening, … every EV brand is heavily slashing prices … just thumb through electrec.co
but it seems those “huge countries with nothing in there” like Canada and Australia are the worst case scenario for EVs … obv. they do way better in highly populated metro areas
Any thoughts on my special use-case?
I normally purchase good quality (mostly japanese) cars 2 or 3 years old, for abouth 50% of list price and then drive them until is becomes econ. unfeasibly (normally 12-15 years)… I drive low miles prob. 5-10k miles per year
so, how do EV batteries stack up in a scenario like that? I understand that Lith. batteries are not only milage limited, but also time limited … IOW how healthy would a EV-battery be after 15 years, even if not used heavily.
I’d hate to throw a perfectly good car a way, just because my range gets cut short from 200 miles per charge to 30 or so …
any thoughts / experiences?
I haven’t done much reading on EV car batteries, but on the bike side they tend to slowly drop to 80% and then plateau. I doubt you would see a 85% drop. Maybe someone will come along that has read about 18 year old EV battery performance…
Hard to find good data on this–in part because the first long-range, mass-market EV (the Model S) is only 12 years old. But after 200k miles, typical degradation is only ~12%:
This doesn’t directly tell you about the age, but one can guess that high mileage is at least correlated with greatest age. I’d predict that a 15-year-old battery would still have >85% capacity unless it had a huge number of miles as well.
Consumer Reports’s annual survey of car maintenance and repair costs for 2023 shows Tesla costs the least. Because it is broken down by manufacturer “Tesla” is probably a big proxy for “EV”. The maintenance cost for other EVs may be low, but that is going to be averaged in with the ICE cars that the other EV manufacturers also make.
No other pure-EV company, like Rivian, is on this list. I hope CR does some further analysis taking into account fuel or vehicle type.
This does not include collision repair, just mechanical repair due to failure plus maintenance.
Musk is reported to have fired his Supercharger division. What are Superchargers, and how does this affect effect economics of Tesla cars?
Superchargers are Tesla’s charging network. They used to be a private network, but they’re in the process of opening them up to other manufacturers. They’re widely considered to be the best charging network, and every major North American manufacturer has promised to switch to Tesla’s (now standardized) plug (called NACS).
There’s probably no immediate change to the quality of the network. They’ve built out quite a bit already–possibly overbuilt. But they’re still selling cars, and other manufacturers are coming online, so they’ll need to expand eventually. That might be a few years down the line, though.
The major risk is in North America. In Europe and China, the Supercharger advantage isn’t nearly so great. So Tesla can depend on other networks to some extent. And other charger networks are very slowly closing the gap here.
There’s probably also no immediate change to the economics of their cars, except that 500 employee salaries isn’t a trivial amount. The macroeconomic situation still isn’t that great, with high interest rates and inflation. So Tesla and others all face price pressure. They can possibly cut prices by a bit to keep up demand. Tesla’s last quarter wasn’t great, but other EV makers were largely worse (propped up by ICE divisions, if any), and Tesla is still the only company outside of China that has a profitable EV division (last I checked–there might be some exceptions these days).
This is a single anecdote, but you know what they say.
My neighbor has a Tesla Model 3, as well as two ICE cars. His Tesla stays in the garage most of the time (where the charger is located) and is used primarily as a “fun” car for local trips. He and his wife are both retired and do not have to commute. I’ve talked with him a couple times about the fact that he has kept all three cars when there are only two drivers in the house. He has always said that his plans were to use the Tesla more and more for longer trips, selling one of the ICE cars, as the charger network expands.
I chatted with him in the yard yesterday and he was pretty bummed out about Tesla’s move re their supercharger team. His Tesla is worth quite a bit less now than he expected when he purchased it and he’s unsure about whether the charging network will be substantially expanded over the next couple years. To add to the dilemma, his wife has made it clear that she doesn’t want to screw around with anything but superchargers while on road trips with the Tesla. They apparently have had some bad experiences.
TL;DR: The change in the Tesla supercharger team and the de-emphasis of network expansion is a big deal to my neighbor.
I would agree with that view, but in many places the supercharger network is outstanding. We took a three state road trip last month and had plenty of Tesla charging options. (US West coast, so YMMV)
We’re in NC and I don’t know exactly where they go on their longer trips, so I can’t speak to the specifics. But she “will accept no substitutes” when it comes to charging stations.
We only take our Tesla if we’re going on a trip that will require supercharging. The Tesla network is far superior to the alternatives. I suppose the L2 stations are fine for overnight, but for fast charging, I agree with your neighbor.
I agree too. The non Tesla charging stations are known to be unreliable and often have broken units.
Just another single data point: four to five years ago I had issues with a couple non-Tesla fast charging stations being out of commission, but I have not had that problem since then.
I posted in a different thread, the non-Tesla network certainly needs to be expanded. But I think much of the reputation for unreliability is historical. There has been a major improvement just in the last couple of years (in Oregon, at least).
I can believe that. My bad experiences were 3 or so years ago. I’ll keep an open mind.
But Tesla is so seamless and easy (and for us, free).
While a relative nubile to the electric car world, Electrify America has the fastest chargers out there (150 and 350 kw) and almost every charging session, I’ve had a Tesla or two plugged in.
But back to the neighbor, when you enter your itinerary in the navigation system in the car or on the Tesla web page, it shows all of the superchargers along the route so you can so you can tell if there will be an issue.
The impression I get from my neighbor is that he is concerned that the combination of non-Tesla EVs starting to use the Tesla charging network more and the (apparent) plateauing of Tesla network expansion might be a problem. Again, I don’t know where he plans to travel or what kinds of issues he may have had.
And I apologize for “plateauing.”
Musk’s Tesla tells Tesla owners in Newfoundland and Labrador to pound sand.
ends mobile service repairs province-wide;
repairs covered by warranty can only be made at one location in St John’s, but only every two months;
for repairs not covered by warranty, Tesla owners in N&L must take their cars to Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is on the mainland, requiring a 22 hour ferry trip.
So, cutting back on service and on expansion of charging facilities. Interesting business model.
I feel a bit dirty for having given Elon some money, but I recently charged my Mach E at a Magic Dock Tesla station. It worked instantly. There’s no display so I had to go inside my car to verify that it worked instantly, but it did. I’m supposed to also have instant charging with Electrify America, but I usually end up having to use my card.
I hate phone apps, and so there’s an awesome somewhat-new-comer that I used recently, too: Red E Charge. Plug in, contactless payment, and 100kwh charging. So much better than EA.
Current preference for my non-Tesla Mach E: Tesla plug and charge, credit card, EA plug and charge.
Still, despite my preference, I feel dirty giving Tesla and Elon my money.
I was a bit curious about the economics of EV charging stations, so I did a search on Google. The first hit I got was MckInsey & Company article at:
What surprised me was their baseline assumption that a typical charger would have 15% utilization, “equivalent to seven 30-minute charging sessions per day” and would generate “$265,000 to $285, 000 in annual revenue.”
Now, I’m not very good at math, but that sounds like each charging session (2,555 per year) would generate $103.71 on average. This sounds awfully high to me. Does a 30-minute charging session actually cost this much? I don’t own an EV, so I have no idea. It just seems very high.